Love and War: The Romance and Epic Traditions in Premodern Persian

Undergraduate / Graduate

This advanced reading course introduces students to the intertwined epic and romance genres in premodern Persian. Through engagement with the original sources, students will become familiar with the vocabulary, grammatical features, poetic topoi, and metrical rules necessary to read, understand, and analyze key selections from Ferdowsi, Neẓāmi, Amir Khosrow, Jāmi, and other poets. In addition to developing their linguistic skills and familiarizing themselves with central texts of the premodern Persian canon, students will also engage with both Persian- and English-language scholarship on the tradition. This course is open to those who have completed two years of Persian or the equivalent, or are currently enrolled in the second year.